Eluvio claims breakthrough in ultra-low-latency streaming after World Cup pilot
Eluvio CEO and co-founder Michelle Munson says the streaming industry is entering a new phase where ultra-low-latency performance is no longer a niche requirement but a fundamental expectation for global sports. After a summer of high-pressure testing during the FIFA World Cup, she argues that Eluvio’s Content Fabric has demonstrated a level of consistency that conventional cloud/CDN architectures simply cannot match.
Eluvio streamed all 104 FIFA World Cup matches in a paid commercial pilot with a tier-one U.S. broadcaster. Munson calls it a “capstone” moment for the company, designed to validate direct-to-consumer performance at scale. The headline metric was latency—and the numbers were stark.
“We were ahead of the broadcast with DTC streaming by seven to ten seconds per match,” she reports. “Ahead of the best streaming service the broadcaster had by 15 to 25 seconds. And consistently ahead of other streaming services—typically 30 seconds to a minute.”
Crucially, she stresses that this performance was uniform worldwide: “It didn’t drift over time, and it didn’t vary by region.” For Munson, that consistency is what separates the Fabric from legacy approaches. “When everyone around the world is watching the same moment, being behind is painful,” she says.
Ultra-low-latency delivery without tradeoffs
The pilot also validated Eluvio’s ability to deliver ultra-low-latency B2B broadcast feeds, which often require sub-500-millisecond performance globally. Munson says Content Fabric delivered “well under 20 milliseconds” in the U.S. for those feeds—numbers that place it in broadcast territory rather than streaming territory.
Munson rejects the idea that ULL is about shaving milliseconds for competitive advantage. “When you’re 10 seconds ahead of broadcast, 15 seconds ahead of best-case world streaming, and typically 30 seconds ahead, you’re in a different category,” she says.
Historically, she argues, low-latency streaming has required trade-offs—security, ease of deployment, universality, cost. “They were too complex, too expensive, or simply not good enough,” she says. “We don’t compromise those things.”
Eluvio will announce the broadcaster behind the World Cup pilot later this year (though not at IBC2026 in a couple weeks). Based on what Munson said this was with either Fox (which aired coverage on Fox, FS1, and streamed on Fox One) or NBCU (which held Spanish-language rights to the tournament in the US and broadcast on Telemundo with all matches streamed on Peacock).
As large as this pilot was, Munson says her company has already run an even larger deployment with another tier-one sports league (which will also not be revealed at IBC).
Michelle Munson, CEO & co-founder, Eluvio
Leveraging Eluvio's Zero-Copy Architecture
Munson attributes the latency gains to the Fabric’s zero-copy architecture, which she describes as fundamentally different from traditional cloud/CDN workflows.
Instead of transcoding, packaging, chunking, and pushing content through CDNs, the Fabric creates a componentised, reference-based representation of video, audio, and metadata. “It’s literally the same parts in the network,” she says. Live streams, VOD, clips, and B2B feeds are all assembled from the same underlying objects.
“There’s no republishing, retranscoding, or re-packaging. Clips are created instantly. One distribution serves everywhere.” Munson says this eliminates egress fees, removes the need to store multiple renditions, and keeps core bandwidth flat regardless of audience size.
Latency comes from combining zero-copy with just-in-time video processing, which fetches and assembles object parts without adding delay. “It performs uniformly worldwide—game after game,” she says.
During the World Cup, she says, the broadcaster delivered feeds “literally a few days before kick-off and just went.” Because of just-in-time publishing, the system was ready as soon as the live feeds and front-end experience were in place.
Many recent ULL solutions rely on WebRTC or proprietary protocols that introduce compatibility challenges.
Eluvio says it maintains standard DASH and HLS delivery while reducing end-to-end consumer latency. For broadcaster contribution and distribution, the platform supports SRT outputs with sub-second latency.
According to Munson, this is achieved by changing the underlying content routing architecture rather than replacing established playback standards.
Instead of repeatedly retrieving manifests and media segments from origin servers, Content Fabric distributes reusable content components throughout the network, assembling streams dynamically as requests arrive.
Because requests are fulfilled from distributed content objects rather than repeatedly generated assets, Eluvio argues that scalability becomes independent of audience size.
Munson emphasises that the Fabric doesn’t require broadcasters to change their workflows. Inputs remain standard—SRT, transport stream, RTMP—and outputs are standard DASH and HLS. The platform supports HEVC multiview, all major DRMs, server-side ad insertion, discontinuities, Dolby Atmos, and HDR10. Eluvio will announce live Dolby Vision support at IBC.
Munson says the fabric could deploy Media over QUIC, but Eluvio hasn’t needed it: “We’ve no gaps in performance to fill.”
“QUIC is compelling for real-time interactive use cases,” she says, but “for one-to-many distribution, it doesn’t offer a benefit.”
A single pipeline for broadcast and streaming
At NAB earlier this year Eluvio talked about extending Content Fabric into broadcast distribution. Historically, broadcast contribution and consumer streaming have relied on entirely separate infrastructures. Satellite and dedicated transport networks handle affiliate distribution. OTT platforms operate through cloud encoders and CDNs.
Eluvio is attempting to collapse these workflows into one platform.
Using the same underlying content representation, broadcasters can ingest transport streams and distribute them globally to affiliates via SRT while simultaneously serving consumer OTT applications from the identical source.
The company says this enables broadcast-quality contribution and DTC streaming with functions like DVR, VOD creation and archive generation all from a single distribution pipeline.
For organisations operating premium live sports, the potential reduction in duplicated workflows could significantly simplify operations.
“Our company exploded this year”
Munson describes 2024–2025 as a breakout period for Eluvio. “Our company has just exploded this year,” she says. Broadcasters are looking for simplification, efficiency, and picture quality. She believes Fabric represents that breakthrough.
Sports organisations are also using Eluvio for direct monetisation, unlocking “dark markets” because the platform is inexpensive and globally scalable. According to Munson, the architecture enables the organisation to operate with a small technical team while expanding monetisation beyond territories covered by traditional broadcast licensing.
Clients including global club rugby league the United Rugby Championship and URC’s partner, European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR), streamed around 300 live events on Fabric for the 2025/26 season. Cricket Australia, the country’s governing body for professional men’s and women’s cricket, have also piloted a Fabric deployment.
Munson again hints that in the U.S., Eluvio is working with a tier-one league “second to none,” though details remain under wraps.